ARE WAR MUTILATIONS TRANSMISSIBLE ?

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLII, Issue 11633, 7 September 1918, Page 7

ARE WAR MUTILATIONS TRANSMISSIBLE ?

NO DANGERS FOE POSTERITY. A great number of women wbo have married, or will marry, soldiers suffering for mutilations received in the war are asking: “Do my children run any risk of hered itary mutilation ? Will they be born physically perfect, or can they be born like their father?’’ An anwer to this question will obviate much uneasiness and mental suffer* ing. There is abundance of evidence that certain characteristic of the parents can be transmitted to the offspring. It is a matter of everyday observation thai chidren re? semble their parents in facial ap pearance, stature, an:l build. The Bourbon nose and the Hapsburg lip have been transmitted by the males of the race for centuries despite their alliance with women of very varied descent. The tendency to obesity is very commonly inherited. As regards actual deformation and abnormalities, that common deformity of the face constituting harelips definitely transmissible, as are abnormaltles of the blood-vascular system aud the skeleton. As instances of the latter may be mentioned narrowing of the pulmonary artery and increase la the number of fingers and toes. That pronounced tendency to bleed which constitutes the disease of haemophilia is essentially hereditary If there is much evidence to show that such parental characteristics can be trasmitted. what can be said of the possibility of transmitting war mntilaitons? Before answering tills question let us look at the case of other acquired deformities not resulting from wounds of coservativew ar surgery. Is there any evidence that they can be transmittted ? In the Chinese Empire it is customary to manipulate the feet of the children that considerable deformity results. Nevertheless this deformity has to be produced In each generation afresh, for it is never transmuted. The same must be said of those mutilations which are carried out generation after generation by cer tain races from religious motives or from custom. They have to be re peated upon each individual all through the ages. As regards war mutilations, the answer is also in the negative—they cannot be transmitted In those cases above which apparently favonr the suggestion the parents may transmit certain characteristics to their children, the reason is that the germ cell is primarily affected and has, so to speak, ineffaceable characters stamped upon it. Such a condition cannot be brought anout by mutilations of outlying parts of the body, and there is no evidence worth the name that the children of this generation will suffer from the fact that their male parems have shed their b’ood or sacrificed limbs in the cause of their country.— E. W. B. in the Daily Mail